A Captain in the Ranks: A Romance of Affairs

She spent the intervening time in securing two wagons with four stout horses to each, and when the freight came it was loaded upon these with particular care, so that no accidents might occur to delay the journey. If the roads had been even tolerably good, one of the wagons might have carried the load, perhaps, but the roads were execrably bad and Barbara was not minded to take any risks.

When the loading was done, it was nearly nightfall, but the eager girl insisted upon starting immediately, to the profound disgust of her drivers. The first ten miles of road was the best ten miles, as the drivers assured her, and by insisting upon a start that evening instead of waiting for morning, she managed to cover that part of the distance by eleven o'clock. Then she established a camp, saw the horses fed, gave the drivers a hot and savory supper, and ordered them to be ready to start again at sunrise.

On resuming the journey in the morning, Barbara urged the teamsters to their best endeavors, reinforcing her plea for haste with a promise of a tempting money reward for each of them if they should complete the journey that day.

The drivers did their mightiest to earn the reward, but the difficulties in the way proved to be much greater than even they had anticipated. For the two great rivers had at last broken over their banks and their waters were already spreading over the face of the land. The country through which the road ran was slightly rolling. The small hillocks were secure from overflow at any time, but the low-lying spaces between them were already under water, the depth of which varied from a few inches to two or three feet. The soft earth of the roadbed was now a mere quagmire, through which the horses laboriously dragged the wagons hub deep in mud.

Worse still were those stretches of road which had been corduroyed with logs. For there some of the logs were floating out of place, and some were piled on top of those that were still held fast in the mud.

In dragging the wagons through the mud reaches, it was necessary to stop every few minutes to give the horses a breathing spell. On the corduroy stretches it was often necessary to stop for half an hour or more at a time, while the drivers and Bob, wading knee deep, made such repairs as were possible and absolutely necessary.

Bob, with his habitual exuberance of spirit, enjoyed all this mightily. The drivers did not enjoy it at all. Several times, indeed, they wanted to abandon the attempt, declaring that it was impossible to go farther. But for Barbara's persuasive urgency, they would have unhitched the horses and gone home, leaving the wagons to such fate as might overtake them. As it was, the caravan moved slowly onward, with many haltings and much of weariness.

It was midnight when, at last, the flare of the torches told Barbara that the journey was done. Not knowing whither the wagons should be taken, Barbara bade Bob go and find Duncan.

When the young man heard of Barbara's arrival, he and Dick Temple hurried to her, full of apprehension lest the journey and the exposure should have made her ill, and fuller still of fear that the conditions of life in the camp might prove to involve more of hardship than she could bear. For the first time in his life, Guilford Duncan felt like scolding.

"What on earth are you doing here, Barbara?" he asked, and before he could add anything to the question, she playfully answered:

"Just now, I'm waiting for you to tell the teamsters where to drive the wagons."

"But Barbara – "

"Never mind the rest of your scolding. I've already rehearsed it in my imagination till I know it all by heart – forwards and backwards. Tell the men where the cooking place is."

"But what are we to do with you, in all this flood and mud, and in the incessant rain?"

"Just let me alone while I 'help in earnest,' as you said in your dispatch that you wanted me to do. You telegraphed me that you wanted two good cooks, so here we are, Bob and I. For, really, Bob has learned to cook as well as I can. I only wonder you didn't send for us sooner. Now, we mustn't waste any more time talking. I've got to set to work if the men are to have their breakfast on time, and there's a lot of unloading to do before I can get at the things."

The girl's voice was strained and her manner not quite natural. The long anxiety and the cold and the weariness had begun to tell upon her. She was strong and resolute still, and ready for any physical effort or endurance that might be required of her. But she felt that she could stand no more of emotional strain. So, speaking low to Duncan, in order that his friend might not hear, she said:

"Please, Guilford, don't say anything more that your tenderness suggests. I can't stand it. Be just commonplace and practical. Show the teamsters the way and let me get to work. I'll be happier then and better."

Duncan understood and was wise enough to obey. Half an hour later he and Temple had gone back to the crib, leaving Barbara to direct the unloading of the wagons. A little later still, Bob and the two negro women who had hitherto done the cooking went out among the men at work, bearing great kettles of steaming coffee for the refreshment of the well-nigh exhausted toilers. Bob accompanied his share of the coffee distribution by a little speech of his own devising:

"Dar, now! Dat's coffee as is, an' it's hot an' strong, too. Little Missie done mek it wif her own han's and she's de lady wot sen's it to you. She's done come out inter de wilderness, jes to cook victuals fer you men, and you jes bet yer bottom dollar you'll git a breakfas' in the mawnin'."

Realizing the situation, and stimulated by their deep draughts of coffee, the men set up a cheer for "Little Missie," though they knew not who she was, and thought of her chiefly as a source of food supply. But they worked the better for the coffee, and for the promise it held out of good things to come.

XXXV

The End of a Struggle

When Duncan and Temple went to Barbara's fire for their breakfast, after the workmen had been served, both were quick-witted enough to see that the little lady was in no condition to endure emotion of any kind. She had slept little on the night before leaving Cairo, very little more at the night camp during the journey, and not at all on the night of her arrival. Her first words indicated a purpose on her part to fend off all talk that might touch upon personal matters.

"Good-morning, gentlemen," she said. "I'm very well, thank you, so you needn't ask me about that, especially as there are more important things to be discussed. I brought all the supplies I could, but after seeing the men eat, I realize that we shall run short of food very soon. How many more days are there?"

"Four more – including to-day."

"Then you must telegraph at once to Cairo for more beef, or we shall run short. Please go and telegraph at once, Guilford. Then come back and your breakfast will be ready."

When he had gone, the girl turned to Temple and said:

"Everything is ready for you two. Bob will serve it. I think I'll go and sleep a little, now. Don't fail to wake me at ten o'clock, Bob, and have the roasts cut and ready to hang over the fire when I get up."

With that, she tripped away to the canvas-covered wagon, which Duncan had detained at the camp to serve her as sleeping quarters.

Late in the evening of that day, the two teamsters, who had started early in the morning on their return journey with the other wagon, rode back into camp on their horses. They reported the water as rising everywhere. In addition to the incoming flood from the swollen rivers, the nearly ceaseless rain had made raging torrents of all the creeks, and lakes of all the valleys. The teamsters had been obliged to abandon their wagon, wholly unable to make their way further.

"Then we shall get no more provisions," said Barbara, in a sadly troubled voice.

"And that's a pity," answered Temple. "For the men's spirits have greatly revived under the stimulus of your improved commissariat, Miss Barbara. How long will your supplies last?"

"I've enough coffee, flour, and molasses," she answered, "to last through. But the fresh meat will be exhausted by to-morrow night. The hams will help out, for breakfasts, but they won't go far among two hundred men. I'm sorry I couldn't have brought more."

"You could not have got through at all if your loads had been heavier," said Duncan. "We must simply do the best we can with what we've got. The coffee alone will go far to sustain the men, and the molasses will be a valuable substitute for meat. I still have hopes that we shall win."

"Oh, we must win, you know. You mustn't allow yourself to think of anything else."

"We'll try, at any rate, and with your superb courage to help us, I think we shall win."

It was six o'clock on the morning of the last day, when the night gave its first intimation of a purpose to come to an end. In the slow-coming gray of the dawn, the torches still flared, casting long and distorted shadows of the work-weary men, as they continued their toil. During that last night the entire company had been kept at work in a last desperate effort to accomplish the end so vitally necessary. All night long Duncan had done what he could to encourage the toilers, while Temple had given his attention to such devices as might shorten the task, or otherwise facilitate its doing. All night long Barbara had busied herself furnishing limitless coffee as an atonement for the insufficient food the men had had since her supplies of meat ran out, two days before.

During the last half hour the rain had almost ceased, and Guilford Duncan had indulged an anxious hope that the skies might clear away with the sunrise, but just as the gray of morning began to give light enough for the workmen to see without the aid of the torches, the downpour began again, more pitilessly than ever.

Its discouraging effect upon the already exhausted men was instantly apparent. A dozen of them at once quitted work and doggedly sat down in the mud of the embankment. Two or three others, reckless of everything but their own suffering, stretched themselves at full length to sleep where they were – too weary and hopeless, now, even to seek the less uncomfortable spots in which to rest their worn-out bodies.

"Six hours more," said Duncan, looking at his watch. "Only six hours between us and triumph. Only six hours – and we must lose all, simply because the men are done up."

"We'll do it yet," answered young Temple.

"We never can. Those fellows are done for, I tell you. I know the symptoms. They've lost their morale, lost the ambition for success. I've seen soldiers fall in precisely that way, too far gone even to shelter themselves from a cannonade."

For the first time in his life, Guilford Duncan realized that there is such a thing as the Impossible. For the first time, he recognized the fact that there may be things which even courage and determination cannot achieve.

The simple fact was that the long strain had at last begun to tell, even upon his resolute spirit. For three days and nights now he had not slept. For three days and nights he had not sat down. For three days and nights he had been wading in water and struggling in mud, and exhausting all his resources of mind and character in efforts to stimulate the men to continued endeavor.

He was playing for a tremendous stake, as we know. His career, his future, all that he had ever dreamed of of ambition, hung upon success or failure in this undertaking, and now at last, and in spite of his heroic struggle, failure stared him in the face.

And apart from these considerations of self-interest, there were other and higher things to be thought of. If he failed now, an enterprise must be lost in which he had labored for a year to induce others to invest millions. If he failed, the diversion of this railroad from its original course must become an accomplished fact, to the ruin of his adopted city and the paralysis of growth in all that region, for perhaps ten years to come. Thus his own career, the millions of other men's money, which had been risked upon faith in his power to achieve, and, worst of all, the development of all this fair, but very backward region – all of good to others, of which he had dreamed, and for which he had hoped and toiled – depended upon his success or failure in keeping two hundred utterly worn-out men at work in the rain, the water, and the mud, for six hours more.

At last, this resolute man, whose courage had seemed unconquerable, was discouraged.

"Might as well give it up," said Will Hallam. "The men simply will not work any longer."

"It isn't a case of will not, but of cannot," answered Duncan.

Barbara heard all, as she hovered over the fire of logs, and busied herself with her tasks, regardless of rain and weariness, regardless of every consideration of self. She wore no wraps or protection of any kind against the torrents of rain. "They would simply bother me," she said, when urged to protect her person. Her face was flushed by the heat of the fire, but otherwise she was very pale, and her tightly compressed lips were livid as she straightened herself up to answer Duncan's despairing words.